| 1. |
- Kilger, Magnus, 1974-
(författare)
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Talking talent : Narratives of youth sports selection
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In sports, there seems to be an eternal interest in discovering young talents and refining them into elite adult athletes. The dilemma of selecting talent, while at the same time ensuring every child´s right to participate, needs to be addressed and have consequences in social practice. This dissertation elucidates the discourse of selection and the process of selecting young sporting talents during final selection camps for youth national teams in football, hockey and floorball in Sweden. More specifically, the aim is to analyze how talent selection is organizationally legitimized, how “selectability” is produced in interaction and how specific narratives are used in success-stories. The empirical material includes research interviews, performance appraisal interviews (between district or national team coaches and the player) and field studies during ongoing final selection camp. Drawing on a discursive-narrative approach, the aim is to investigate how selection is discursively legitimized and, by using narrative analysis, how positioning in talk-in-interaction functions.The first article investigates the construction of legitimate selection within the Swedish Sports Confederation by analyzing their organizational documents, sport journals and literature for coach education. The findings show how a specific set of narratives are used to legitimize selection and how legitimacy works both individually to those within the selection system and on a wider arena of welfare politics. The second article investigates the co-construction of selectability in small story-interaction during interviews between the coach and a player in the final selection camp. The analyses highlight how this narrative genre produces certain stories and preferred positions. The third article analyzes how the young participants, in research interviews during final selection camp, uses discursively shared narratives to produce personal stories of success. The findings illustrate how the personal stories of success are balancing the dilemmatic space, positioning yourself as outstanding and at the same time appear a humble team player.The principal contribution of this dissertation is to show how talent is organizationally legitimized and how selectability is produced in interaction, as well as illustrate how specific stories are used in stories of success. This work investigates the discursive framework for selection and how rationalities for talent selection are produced (and reproduced) and co-constructed in narrative interaction. In this apparatus of selection it takes more than physical talent to be chosen; it takes talking talent.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Kempe-Bergman, Matthis
(författare)
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Man talar om jämställd idrott : Om jämställdhetssamtal med manliga idrottsledare och förutsättningar för jämställd idrott
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- As a result of a historically anchored relationship between the Swedish state and the sports movement, gender equality has been a prioritized area of interest in Swedish sports since the 1970s. Despite long-term work in this field, research indicates a notable gap between what is said and done at the central level and locally. Research also indicates attitude problems; gender equality is often seen as an insignificant or unnecessary issue.This thesis seeks to relate to and analyze this development. Answers are sought via male sport coaches and leaders. This approach is motivated by the fact that gender equality-related sport research in Sweden seldom focuses on men and masculinities. At the same time men have been overrepresented as power holders and decision makers, and gender equality has consequently been constructed as a women’s issue. By means of a post-structural discourse analysis, the aim is to investigate constructions of gender equality in interviews with 47 leaders selected from seven sports. How is gender equality constructed in terms of meanings of and standpoints in relation to the concept, and which discourses set the frames for these constructions? Which subject positions are articulated?Results show that gender equality is given many different meanings in the interviews and that these meanings are produced in line with three discourses: a women’s rights discourse (semi-essentialism, structural feminism, a quantitative and qualitative support for women’s sport), a gender critical discourse (constructionism, structural feminism, “women can”, deconstructions of femininities) and a liberal discourse (“sport for all”, individualism, gender neutrality). Furthermore, four subject positions are distinguished: the skeptic, the cynic, the women rightist and the norm critic position. When the results are related to the production of gender equality policies four aspects are discussed, 1) relations between discourses (the discourses generate contradictory interpretations of sport, subjectivity, gender and equality), 2) men and gender equality, 3) the relatively substantial lack of interest in gender equality in the interviews and 4) sport and pluralism.One conclusion in the thesis is that the women’s rights discourse dominates and that the liberal discourse is marginalized in the interviews. Further, it is suggested that an elaboration and a more frequent practice of the gender critical discourse could be useful in the development of the gender equality project in Swedish sport.
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| 4. |
- Larsson, Håkan
(författare)
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Iscensättningen av kön i idrott : en nutidshistoria om idrottsmannen och idrottskvinnan
- 2001
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this dissertation is to disseminate the construction of masculinity and femininity in sport and sports related research. The major research question is how sport and sports related research function, on the one hand in the production of 'women' and 'men' as objects and subjects of knowledge, and on the other as a technique or procedure for regulating men's and women's behaviour and ways of reflecting upon themselves. The interest is thus aimed at how gendered subjects are made. Of particular interest is the concept of equal opportunities between women and men in sport as a new way of creating sexual/gender difference. Michel Foucault's concept 'governmentality', roughly the relation between the histories of the practices of the self and the practices of government, serves as one important tool in this work.Empirically, the study derives from 22 interviews with teenagers and coaches in track and field athletics. The interviews comprises of three themes: 'me and other boys and girls in sport', 'the body' and 'the coach'. The teenagers' answers can simultaneousl be seen as reproducing and opposing conventional perceptions of men as autonomous and goal achievement oriented, and women as dependent and relation oriented. What historical conditions have made this situation possible?A genealogical study of the construction of sport, and of masculinity and femininity in sport and sports related research, show that a patriarchal governmentality, where young men were seen as the only 'appropriate' competitive sportsmen, have successively been transformed into a social-liberal and a neo-liberal governmentality. In patriarchal discourses, a strong emphasis is put on gender differentiation and 'seriousness' (i.e. competition and performance) in sport. The sporting subject is constructed as a decidedly masculine subject. In social-liberal discourses, an emphasis is put on social relations and fellowship, and the sporting subject is constructed as a gender-neutral (and somewhat disembodied) subject. In neo-liberal discourses, the subject is constructed as an individual, however gender-specific (and heterosexual), subject. Neo-liberal does not emphasise difference between subjects (social and physical difference) but difference inside the subject (individual). Modern power relations aim at procedures that occur inside the subject and not so much at what takes place between the subjects.The concept of gender equity between women and men has grown strong in sports discourse since the 70s. It can be seen as a practical strategy of guaranteeing women and men the opportunities to do the same things - competitive sport for instance. At the same time it performs two distinct and clearly differentiated gendered subjects, to be equalised. As such gender equity policies might be preceived as an apparatus that produces and regulates sexual/gender difference.
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| 5. |
- Linghede, Eva, 1978-
(författare)
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Glitch i Idrottslandet : en kritiskkreativ undersökning av queeranden inom svensk idrott(svetenskap)
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The dominant story in critical sports research is that sport is characterised by heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity norms. These norms are manifested in sexism, homophobia, homonegativity and racism which affect all athletes, regardless of identity. Although important, this is a story that risks reinforcing ideas of how all sport “is”. The thesis is a response to calls from feminist theorists and sport researchers who argue that we need to move away from a logic of negativity built into critical theory and instead put our analytical tools to the task of constructing alternative possible scenarios. The aim of the thesis is to explore what some major strands within contemporary feminist theory can accomplish in relation to dominating stories about gender, sexuality and scientific knowledge production in sport research. More specifically, I explore how the concepts of figuration and intra-action can open up for other possible sport (science) worlds.The thesis consists of a frame-story and four articles, which in turn are based on three substudies. In the first substudy I interviewed boys and men who engage with horses and in horse riding. By engaging in a sport, equestrianism, that in Sweden is dominated by girls/women and female coded, they transgress and challenge – glitch – ideas of how Real sports boys/men should be, live and act. The interview stories from this study are enacted in various ways in article I and IV. In the second substudy I interviewed elite athletes with experiences of living non-straight and who in that way glitch heteronormativity in sports (sometimes also homonormativity). These stories make up the heart of the figurations presented in article II. In the third substudy, I explored athletic bodies that, due to intersex variations, glitch the idea that the only way of being a body (in sport) is to be male or female. This analysis is presented in article III.The thesis is populated by horseguys who challenge stereotypical masculinity norms, sporting contexts that turn heteronormativity up-side-down and inside-out, athletic bodies that implode binary gender and a researcher I glitching a scientific (writing) genre. The figurations presented in the thesis open up for queering elsewheres, where engaging in sport can serve as a condition of possibility for same-sex attractions/relations and non-normative ways of being a boy/man, and where creative writing – in the form of fiction, poetry and genre mixing – can be used as a method of inquiry.Through the concept of intra-action, the thesis also makes visible that “matter matters”. Firstly, I show how engaging materially with horses allow and encourage boys/men to be less constrained by dominant gender norms – in other words, that human-horse relations are entangled with, and affect, boys’ and men’s doing of gender. Secondly, I make visible how athletic bodies “strike back” in relation to ideas of binary gender, glitching a dominant medico-scientific story (in sport) telling us that the only way of being a body is to be male or female. Thirdly, I enact – in form and content – how the researcher is always already entangled in scientific knowledge production.
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| 6. |
- Arnegård, Johan, 1958-
(författare)
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Upplevelser och lärande i äventyrssport och skola
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The physicality of sports and outdoor life offers great opportunities for intensive experiences – participants ”feel” the happening in their bodies. As well as looking upon physical activity mainly as something instrumental, as for example in competitive sports and exercise culture, other aspects can also be central, for instance the pure joy of movement. The existential or expressive side of physical activity is examined in this doctoral thesis.In order to study such experiential quality more thoroughly, the author’s attention turns to adventure sports participants, as they appear to have a capacity for becoming highly involved and seeking very intense experiences. Who is involved in adventure sports? Why are they engaged in a sport that demands such great hardships and risk-taking? What do they get out of it? The overall objective of the thesis is to shed light on adventure sports as a practice and to discuss the educational significance of flow and other experiential qualities in adventure sports and in schools.The analyses are based on three empirical sub-studies. The first began with a questionnaire that 161 adventure sports participants responded to. This was followed by an interview study of eleven men and three women, all of whom had extensive experience in adventure sports. The categories of sport were evenly divided between climbing, off-piste skiing and hang gliding.In the second sub-study a detailed investigation of climbing was carried out. A notable sportification has brought about a very clear and interesting change in parts of this activity. Six traditional/adventure climbers and six sport climbers were interviewed, of which half were men and half women. All the climbers were experienced and very much involved in their sport.The aim of the third sub-study was to seek an answer as to whether pupils have experiences in their daily school life that are similar to those of adventure sports participants. An ESM (Experience Sampling Method) investigation was carried out with 60 pupils in compulsory school year nine (corresponding to UK schools’ year eleven) from four different schools. The pupils’ parents answered a special parent questionnaire including questions about academic and professional backgrounds, living conditions, habits, interests, attitudes and leisure time activities.The results were analysed taking into consideration the phenomenological perspective and structuralistic or more correctly expressed the cultural sociological perspective. Mihály Csikszentmihályi’s theoretical argument on optimal experiences, which in turn is based on the flow concept, constitutes the phenomenological foundation. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept apparatus and theories were used to closely examine the participants’ backgrounds, life histories and current living situations.The study shows that a preference for adventure sports is clearly linked to the participants’ backgrounds and earlier life experiences. A behavioural pattern is incorporated and developed into an embodied capacity to master a practice, a result of a long learning process. Participants were clearly concordant in these respects. Participants emphasise the abundant opportunities for intensive experiences that arise from adventure sports. It is a matter of something multidimentional: the active body, outdoor life in natural surroundings, exacting and clear goals, total focus, and about exercising control. This approach presents a model for identification of content qualities, which together create the dynamics that form the meaningful rewards that result from participation in adventure sports. The dimensions include flow experiences, but also go beyond them.The deep sense of presence, the physical involvement, the fact that they can choose the path and increase the degree of difficulty themselves – and simultaneously counter this new challenge with increased capacity so that they are engaged at the ”right level” – also provide favourable conditions for a stimulating and successful learning experience.The observation was made that it was primarily in the practical and aesthetic subjects that school pupils had the same deep feeling of presence together with a meaningful and pleasurable holistic experience as the adventure sports participants had. Here they were actively involved with their hands or with their whole bodies, and they could make their own choices and be in control of the activity, which for most pupils led to a strong feeling of satisfaction.
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| 7. |
- Backman, Erik, 1972-
(författare)
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Friluftsliv in Swedish Physical Education – a Struggle of Values : Educational and Sociological Perspectives
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to examine some of the educational and sociological conditions underlying the production of teaching in friluftsliv within the Physical Education (PE) subject in Swedish compulsory school. Despite the value awarded to the Scandinavian outdoor practice friluftsliv, in both the national PE curriculum document and in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) in Sweden, it does not seem to be thoroughly implemented in compulsory school teaching. Through analyses of interviews with PE teachers and PE teacher educators, as well as of curriculum documents, using the perspectives of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu, I explore conditions underlying the expressions of friluftsliv teaching in Swedish PE. The pedagogic discourse for friluftsliv in Swedish PE is described as a teaching that should take place in a natural setting remote from civilisation, involve risks, and require time, technical equipment, financial resources, and cooperation. This discourse for friluftsliv is shown to be similar to the values emphasised in friluftsliv education in PETE. Although proven to be difficult to implement in school, this discourse appear to form the conception of friluftsliv teaching for PE teachers in Sweden. Under the influence of the performance code, friluftsliv is transformed into outdoor activities with which the PE teachers are familiar, or is totally left out of PE teaching. A turn towards options that are seen as unthinkable in relation to the current pedagogic discourse may benefit the achievement of the aims set out in the national PE curriculum. Values such as environmental awareness, sustainable development and cultural perspectives on the landscape could strengthen the classification of friluftsliv and PE in compulsory school. Further, an increase of socially critical and constructivist perspectives during PETE could make unthinkable options in friluftsliv thinkable and contribute to a break with the reproduction of teaching practices in PE.
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| 8. |
- Blom, Victoria, 1975-
(författare)
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Striving for self-esteem : Conceptualizations and role in burnout
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- When self-esteem is dependent on competence individuals invest a great deal of effort in their accomplishments in order to validate themselves. The aim of the present thesis was to develop a theoretically sound and valid concept and measure of contingent self-esteem dependent on competence, and examine its vulnerable implications and role in burnout. In Study I a concept and measure of contingent self-esteem dependent on competence, termed competence-based self-esteem (CBSE), was developed. Confirmatory factor analyses showed its distinctiveness from other sources of self-esteem and revealed two dimensions comprising behaviors referring to: i) Self-esteem conditional upon competence and ii) Frustrated self-critical strivings. The new scale showed high reliability and gained both convergent and discriminative validity through different methods in different samples. Study II set out to experimentally test the vulnerable implications of CBSE in a performance situation. The results showed that high, as compared to low, scorers on the scale exhibited stronger physiological reactivity and momentary exertion coupled with frustrated mood. Study III focused on the role of self-esteem contingent on competence in the burnout process and its association with work- and private-life stressors over time in working women and men. The analyses showed that contingent self-esteem was a predictor of burnout. In addition, women scored higher on both contingent self-esteem and burnout and reported higher general life stress than did men, whereas men showed stronger associations between work stressors and burnout. The results of the three studies suggest that contingent self-esteem, where outcomes of one’s acts and performance serve to compensate an impoverished basic self-worth, facilitates the understanding of stress-related vulnerability and ill-health.
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| 9. |
- Bäckström, Åsa, 1966-
(författare)
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Spår : Om brädsportkultur, informella lärprocesser och identitet
- 2005
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Today’s society is subject to an increased importance of aesthetics and an increasing individualism. New trends are adopted early by young people, which make it interesting to focus on how identity is formed and meanings are constructed in a youth culture context and in relation to ongoing societal processes of change.The purpose of this dissertation is to interpret and analyse the construction of meaning within the skateboard and snowboard communities in the social and cultural contexts. In particular, this dissertation is about the relationship between three levels, cultural, practice and individual. The title “Traces” alludes to four analytical themes taking different tracks in the book; consumption, gender, place and identity that are reflected in different chapters. However, the individual leaves traces in culture as culture does in the individual. Furthermore, skaters and snowboarders leave actual tracks in their local geography.Theoretically the study has a culture analysis approach with a semiotic base where five theories are intertwined. Johan Fornäs contributes with his interpretation on culture as system of signs and signifying practices, Stuart Hall adds the concept of representations, Kirsten Drotner provides her argumentation regarding aesthetic practices whilst Ulf Hannerz enriches the dissertation with his discussion on transnational culture-flows and the social diffusion of culture. Roger Säljö proposes a socio-cultural perspective of learning where learning is about participation in knowledge and skills. The method used is ethnographical. The multifaceted empirical material, from field studies and interviews, Swedish skateboard and snowboard magazines between 1978 to 2002, skateboard and snowboard videos, press articles, and websites, has been triangulated. In addition, there are three personal albums of skateboarder, snowboarder and surfer Ants Neo.The study shows that there are stereotyped notions about what boarding means and what it means to be a boarder. These notions both create and are created by the boarders themselves but are also used by advertisers for products not related to board sports at all. These notions, based as they are on ideas of resistance and radicalism, serve to emphasise that boarding is masculine. Resistance takes concrete form in its attitude to organized sports and to multinational brands and in the unusual use of places in the urban environment. To be a boarder is, apart form the boarding skills required, to be also part and parcel of these attitudes.The study explains how meaning and identity are created through informal learning processes in youth culture contexts. In these group-forming processes, both the individual and the community are formulated in social, cultural and aesthetic terms.
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| 10. |
- Engdahl, Christopher
(författare)
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Indetermination in creative dance : On creative dance teaching in physical education teacher education
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall aim of this thesis is to explore how creative dance in Swedish physical education teacher education (PETE) can be taught and experienced. PETE holds a responsibility to extend preservice teachers’ movement repertoires and plays a crucial role to provide opportunities for the future physical education (PE) teachers to gain experience and knowledge of dance teaching. Creative dance is part of the teaching area of dance in PE and often a new experience for students when entering PETE programs. The research literature is scarce, in a Scandinavian context as well as internationally, about creative dance teaching in PETE. This doctoral project, guided by Deleuzian scholarship, includes three studies, a literature review, an interview study and a pedagogical intervention study. These three studies resulted in one article in the form of an unpublished manuscript and three published articles. The first article, the manuscript, explores how theoretical approaches are used in studies of creative dance teaching in PE and PETE. The second article explores how PE teacher educators describe their teaching of creative aspects of dance in PETE. The third article explores what PETE students express and experience when participating in mirror assignments during creative dance lessons and what insights can be made regarding creative dance teaching. The fourth article explores how human and non-human materialities play a part in movement exploration in creative dance in PETE and pedagogical implications in creative dance teaching. The thesis offers four key insights. The first insight is that PE teacher educators have specific ideas about creative aspects of dance and about teaching creative dance. The second insight is that inspiration from Deleuze’s philosophy can support and extend ideas about teaching mirror assignments in creative dance lessons in PETE. The third insight is that teaching mirror assignments in creative dance lessons in PETE can make students’ expressions and experiences involve indetermination. The fourth insight is that a post-anthropocentric and Deleuzian approach can be seen to extend notions of creative dance teaching in PETE. My thesis shows various ways how teaching can encourage PETE students to engage with a teaching area that can be unfamiliar to them. The pedagogical insights presented in this thesis can support PE teacher educators and PE teachers when considering teaching creative dance.
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